Name, Name, What's in a Name?

Do you realize the power of a name?

It strikes me as I'm talking to the person in my school that I most respect. He and I don't always get along, and don't exactly have a good Christian love for each other, but we talk from time to time. And as he left (he sleeps... who does that?), he simply said "goodnight shane".

And for some reason, I was touched.

But it makes sense when you stop to think about it. If a parent is especially pleased with a child, they will use their child's name to praise them, not simply "I'm proud of you". If unusually upset, they will use the first and middle names; and you can't tell me you don't know what that means. If you meet someone, and you ask them who they are, they respond with their name. At the beginning of the world, when God created man, one of the first things he did was to give that man a name.

A name (though it maybe shouldn't be) is an identity. Honor and respect or contempt and derision and be communicated all in the way a person uses a name. Something so simple as a name can have more ramifications on our lives than we usually stop to think about.

So I would challenge you to tomorrow directly address all your friends, your siblings, your peers, and use their name as something to try to lift them up with. See what happens.